Seattle's Pulitzer-winning cartoonist David Horsey's latest cartoons and commentary on politics and current events

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Anti-Semitism or a failure to communicate?

I am mortified to learn that a number of people in the Jewish community around the United States read into a recent cartoon a meaning I never intended.

While there have been times that folks with an axe to grind have purposely misread my work, in this case I can fully appreciate the cause of concern. It was a complete failure on my part to comprehend how the mix of symbols in my cartoon could summon up historical libels against Jews. Here’s an excerpt from a letter-to-the-editor received from Bruce Clement, a reader in the Seattle area, that explains the anger:

I have long been an admirer of David Horsey’s editorial cartoons in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. I have seen Horsey the wise, Horsey the cynic, Horsey the winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

This morning, to my shock and dismay, I was introduced to Horsey the anti-Semite. In the top half of Horsey’s cartoon, a robed Jewish father with a yarmulke comforts his money lender “prodigal son” who has become “filthy rich” by dealing in “risky [real estate] loans”. The father [labeled “federal government”] smilingly reassures his son he’ll “bail you out” by “kill[ing] the fatted calf.” The father and son both have dark kinky hair and big noses.

In the bottom half of the cartoon, the “not-so-prodigal son” pleads for help from his father because he lost his house in foreclosure. The father is walking away with his arm around the shoulders of the money lender son, who is grinning with greed and rubbing his hand over the money he will make from the father’s bail-out of his loan company. The father glances over his shoulder at the son who is losing his house and sneers, “Life’s unfair, kid. Deal with it.”

Horsey’s cartoon would have been perfectly at home in the most rabid Nazi publication in 1930’s Germany. The Nazis also used editorial cartoons with fizzy-haired, big nosed Jews wearing yarmulkes to claim that Germany had been plunged into a major monetary crisis by greedy Jewish bankers and money-lenders, in collusion with treasonous German government officials…

Here is part of my response to Mr. Clement:

First of all, since you have admired my previous work, I trust you will believe that I did not intend to disparage Jews in my March 27th cartoon. That said, I can also see how you and others could read an anti-Semitic message into the drawing, given the wretched history of Jews being maligned in caricatures. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that such disparaging images continue to be produced, even today, by cartoonists in the Mideast, so this is not merely a problem of the past.

I’ll just make a few points of explanation in my own defense. First, the choice of setting for the cartoon was simply literal — the Prodigal Son story came out of ancient Judea, so I decided to take that as my visual metaphor. Second, the hairstyles were meant to be reflective of the era (the hair curls seemed more Mesopotamian to me than anything else). Third, the noses on the characters are no more exaggerated than those on most any of my other cartoon characters. You can easily see that by looking at many of my other cartoons that are not caricatures of specific people. I would take issue with your contention that the cartoon “would have been perfectly at home in the most rabid Nazi publication in 1930’s Germany.” Visually, it wasn’t even close to those abhorrent images.

Nevertheless, I can agree that putting cartoon images of Jewish characters in the context of financial shenanigans and “risky loans” was, itself, a risky thing to do. I should have been aware of the overtones and should have understood the potential for offense. For that, I apologize. Ultimately, such unintended messages undermine my purpose, which is to make satirical statements about contemporary issues that are unambiguous and understandable. Today, I failed in that goal for you and other readers…

Mr. Clement responded with a detailed critique of my note and said I needed to think a little more deeply about the issue. In particular, he questioned my characterization of the cartoon as “risky”:

Risky to what? To your career? Your reputation? Your prospects for another Pulitzer Prize? Apparently you, even now, analyze your cartoon in terms of “risk” instead of its moral depravity.

From his response, I understood that he, and others, assumed I had been trying to make some sort of comment about Jews and that now I was simply acknowledging that I had carried it too far. This, of course, was not the case. I sent Mr. Clement another e-mail:

Thanks for your detailed response. It helps me understand better your reaction to my cartoon. The cartoon was, indeed, poorly crafted since it was not my purpose to send out a message of any kind about Jews. The only point intended was about governmental policy. As I said before, the drawing was simply a portrayal of the Prodigal Son story in it’s original milieu. In my rush toward meeting a deadline, I failed to see how it could be read differently. I would hope you would not judge me by a single cartoon. If I had some history of portraying Jews in a negative way, you would have grounds for making an assumption that I harbor anti-Semitic sentiments. No such pattern exists in my work, however. On the contrary, I have gotten heat in the past for being too sympathetic to Israel.

This seemed to help clarify my intent, but I also realized that one little detail in my cartoon — the yarmulke — had clearly identified the characters as Jews, not as mere ancient residents of the Middle East. It was a dumb, thoughtless, unnecessary addition that was easily remedied. As you can see in the current version of the cartoon, the offending detail is gone. However, even though I e-mailed the revised cartoon to my syndicate to be sent out as a substitute, the first version of the cartoon was already on its way to being printed in various newspapers around the country. I heard from an angry reader in Marin County who was outraged to see it in his local paper. I also heard from Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League in New York City. Here’s what he had to say:

We have received many calls and e-mails from newspaper readers concerned about the biblical imagery employed in your March 27, 2008 editorial cartoon, “The Prodigal Son…The Not-So-Prodigal Son,” which has appeared through syndication in various publications around the country.

We understand that you did not intend for the cartoon to be anti-Semitic, and we appreciate the sensitivity in your decision to subsequently remove the yarmulke from the man labeled “Federal Government” to ensure that the cartoon’s message was not misunderstood or mistaken as an affront to Jews.

We realize that it was your intent to make a comment about the federal housing loan crisis using the parable of the prodigal son from the New Testament. We also are cognizant of the fact that hyperbole and exaggeration are among the essential tools of your trade, and we try to give leeway when evaluating editorial cartoons by keeping this in mind.

Because the notion of Jewish control of the federal government – especially the Federal Reserve – is a well-known anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, you can understand why Jews initially found jarring the image of the “Federal Government” wearing a Jewish skullcap.

Well, yes, I do get it. There is no ethnic group that has contributed more to the grand accomplishments of Western Civilization than the Jews and, yet, they have suffered from the most vile slanders for centuries. I am appalled to realize that a number of Jews now see me as part of that slanderous history.

My Jewish friends know who I am and what I believe but, of course, most people know me only by my cartoons. And a badly crafted cartoon can give an entirely erroneous picture.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..